In the last couple of weeks remaining until the closure of the open call for The ZVONO Award 2018, we are very pleased to introduce to you closer the members of the jury.

James Merle Thomas is a Philadelphia-based art historian and curator and is currently Professor of Global Contemporary Art in the Department of Art History at the Tyler School of Art at Temple University. Prior to earning his doctorate in art history from Stanford University, Thomas worked with critic and curator Okwui Enwezor to produce a series of large-scale biennials and exhibitions of contemporary art, serving as Assistant Curator and Managing Editor of Publications for the Second Seville Biennial (2006), The Seventh Gwangju Biennale (2008), and the Third Paris Triennale (2012). A widely-published writer who has worked in museum and academic settings for over a decade, Thomas has held fellowships at the Center for the Advanced Study in the Visual Arts (CASVA) at the National Gallery of Art, the National Air and Space Museum, and the University of Southern California; and has served as a consulting researcher and contributing author for major publication and project initiatives at the San Francisco Museum of Art, the International Center of Photography in New York, and the Fifty-Fourth Carnegie International, among others. His current curatorial projects and collaborations include Penser l’Afrique, an exhibition and program of study produced with the artist Christian Nyampeta; Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More: Postdemocratic Art & Civil Society, produced with the Philadelphia-based Slought Foundation; and Picture Industry, an anthology of photography-based edited by the artist Walead Beshty.